Gender and the Quest in British Science Fiction Television CRITICAL EXPLORATIONS IN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY (a series edited by Donald E. Palumbo and C.W. Sullivan III) 1 Worlds Apart? Dualism and Transgression in Contemporary Female Dystopias (Dunja M. Mohr, 2005) 2 Tolkien and Shakespeare: Essays on Shared Themes and Language (ed. Janet Brennan Croft, 2007) 3 Culture, Identities and Technology in the Star Wars Films: Essays on the Two Trilogies (ed. Carl Silvio, Tony M. Vinci, 2007) 4 The Influence of Star Trek on Television, Film and Culture (ed. Lincoln Geraghty, 2008) 5 Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction (Gary Westfahl, 2007) 6 One Earth, One People: The Mythopoeic Fantasy Series of Ursula K. Le Guin, Lloyd Alexander, Madeleine L’Engle and Orson Scott Card (Marek Oziewicz, 2008) 7 The Evolution of Tolkien’s Mythology: A Study of the History of Middle-earth (Elizabeth A. Whittingham, 2008) 8 H. Beam Piper: A Biography (John F. Carr, 2008) 9 Dreams and Nightmares: Science and Technology in Myth and Fiction (Mordecai Roshwald, 2008) 10 Lilith in a New Light: Essays on the George MacDonald Fantasy Novel (ed. Lucas H. Harriman, 2008) 11 Feminist Narrative and the Supernatural: The Function of Fantastic Devices in Seven Recent Novels (Katherine J. Weese, 2008) 12 The Science of Fiction and the Fiction of Science: Collected Essays on SF Storytelling and the Gnostic Imagination (Frank McConnell, ed. Gary Westfahl, 2009) 13 Kim Stanley Robinson Maps the Unimaginable: Critical Essays (ed. William J. Burling, 2009) 14 The Inter-Galactic Playground: A Critical Study of Children’s and Teens’ Science Fiction (Farah Mendlesohn, 2009) 15 Science Fiction from Québec: A Postcolonial Study (Amy J. Ransom, 2009) 16 Science Fiction and the Two Cultures: Essays on Bridging the Gap Between the Sciences and the Humanities (ed. Gary Westfahl, George Slusser, 2009) 17 Stephen R. Donaldson and the Modern Epic Vision: A Critical Study of the “Chronicles of Thomas Covenant” Novels (Christine Barkley, 2009) 18 Ursula K. Le Guin’s Journey to Post-Feminism (Amy M. Clarke, 2010) 19 Portals of Power: Magical Agency and Transformation in Literary Fantasy (Lori M. Campbell, 2010) 20 The Animal Fable in Science Fiction and Fantasy (Bruce Shaw, 2010) 21 Illuminating Torchwood: Essays on Narrative, Character and Sexuality in the BBC Series (ed. Andrew Ireland, 2010) 22 Comics as a Nexus of Cultures: Essays on the Interplay of Media, Disciplines and International Perspectives (ed. Mark Berninger, Jochen Ecke, Gideon Haberkorn, 2010) 23 The Anatomy of Utopia: Narration, Estrangement and Ambiguity in More, Wells, Huxley and Clarke (Károly Pintér, 2010) 24 The Anticipation Novelists of 1950s French Science Fiction: Stepchildren of Voltaire (Bradford Lyau, 2010) 25 The Twilight Mystique: Critical Essays on the Novels and Films (ed. Amy M. Clarke, Marijane Osborn, 2010) 26 The Mythic Fantasy of Robert Holdstock: Critical Essays on the Fiction (ed. Donald E. Morse, Kálmán Matolcsy, 2011) 27 Science Fiction and the Prediction of the Future: Essays on Foresight and Fallacy (ed. Gary Westfahl, Wong Kin Yuen, Amy Kit-sze Chan, 2011) 28 Apocalypse in Australian Fiction and Film: A Critical Study (Roslyn Weaver, 2011) 29 British Science Fiction Film and Television: Critical Essays (ed. Tobias Hochscherf, James Leggott, 2011) 30 Cult Telefantasy Series: A Critical Analysis of The Prisoner, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost, Heroes, Doctor Who and Star Trek (Sue Short, 2011) 31 The Postnational Fantasy: Essays on Postcolonialism, Cosmopolitics and Science Fiction (ed. Masood Ashraf Raja, Jason W. Ellis and Swaralipi Nandi, 2011) 32 Heinlein’s Juvenile Novels: A Cultural Dictionary (C.W. Sullivan III, 2011) 33 Welsh Mythology and Folklore in Popular Culture: Essays on Adaptations in Literature, Film, Television and Digital Media (ed. Audrey L. Becker and Kristin Noone, 2011) 34 I See You: The Shifting Paradigms of James Cameron’s Avatar (Ellen Grabiner, 2012) 35 Of Bread, Blood and The Hunger Games: Critical Essays on the Suzanne Collins Trilogy (ed. Mary F. Pharr and Leisa A. Clark, 2012) 36 The Sex Is Out of This World: Essays on the Carnal Side of Science Fiction (ed. Sherry Ginn and Michael G. Cornelius, 2012) 37 Lois McMaster Bujold: Essays on a Modern Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy (ed. Janet Brennan Croft, 2013) 38 Girls Transforming: Invisibility and Age-Shifting in Children’s Fantasy Fiction Since the 1970s (Sanna Lehtonen, 2013) 39 Doctor Who in Time and Space: Essays on Themes, Characters, History and Fandom, 1963–2012 (ed. Gillian I. Leitch, 2013) 40 The Worlds of Farscape: Essays on the Groundbreaking Television Series (ed. Sherry Ginn, 2013) 41 Orbiting Ray Bradbury’s Mars: Biographical, Anthropological, Literary, Scientific and Other Perspectives (ed. Gloria McMillan, 2013) 42 The Heritage of Heinlein: A Critical Reading of the Fiction Television Series (Thomas D. Clareson and Joe Sanders, 2014) 43 The Past That Might Have Been, the Future That May Come: Women Writing Fantastic Fiction, 1960s to the Present (Lauren J. Lacey, 2014) 44 Environments in Science Fiction: Essays on Alternative Spaces (ed. Susan M. Bernardo, 2014) 45 Discworld and the Disciplines: Critical Approaches to the Terry Pratchett Works (ed. Anne Hiebert Alton and William C. Spruiell, 2014) 46 Nature and the Numinous in Mythopoeic Fantasy Literature (Christopher Straw Brawley, 2014) 47 J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard and the Birth of Modern Fantasy (Deke Parsons, 2014) 48 The Monomyth in American Science Fiction Films: 28 Visions of the Hero’s Journey (Donald E. Palumbo, 2014) 49 The Fantastic in Holocaust Literature and Film: Critical Perspectives (ed. Judith B. Kerman and John Edgar Browning, 2014) 50 Star Wars in the Public Square: The Clone Wars as Political Dialogue (Derek R. Sweet, 2016) 51 An Asimov Companion: Characters, Places and Terms in the Robot/Empire/Foundation Metaseries (Donald E. Palumbo, 2016) 52 Michael Moorcock: Fiction, Fantasy and the World’s Pain (Mark Scroggins, 2016) 53 The Last Midnight: Essays on Apocalyptic Narratives in Millennial Media (ed. Leisa A. Clark, Amanda Firestone and Mary F. Pharr, 2016) 54 The Science Fiction Mythmakers: Religion, Science and Philosophy in Wells, Clarke, Dick and Herbert (Jennifer Simkins, 2016) 55 Gender and the Quest in British Science Fiction Television: An Analysis of Doctor Who, Blake’s 7, Red Dwarf and Torchwood (Tom Powers, 2016) This page intentionally left blank Gender and the Quest in British Science Fiction Television An Analysis of Doctor Who, Blake’s 7, Red Dwarf and Torchwood Tom Powers Foreword by Matt Hills CRITICAL EXPLORATIONS IN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY, 55 Series Editors Donald E. Palumbo and C.W. Sullivan III McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina ISBN (print) 978-1-4766-6552-8 ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-2693-2 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE © 2016 Tom Powers. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com For my wife Amanda Acknowledgments I would like to thank Thomas J. Slater, whose synergistic advising on my dissertation led to the creation of this book, as well as my dissertation committee members, John Branscum and Christopher Orchard, who gave me valuable advice and encouragement. Moreover, I appreciate Alexis Lothian, for introducing me to queer theory; Hugh Ormsby-Lennon, for supporting my early musings on Red Dwarf; Marc Schuster, for his insightful feedback on my manuscript; and Don Z. Block, for his kind words. I am also grateful to Donald E. Palumbo, who helped me to refine this work for publication, and Matt Hills, for providing such a thoughtful foreword. viii Table of Contents Acknowledgments viii Foreword: The Challenges of Regeneration (by Matt Hills) 1 Introduction: Doctor Who, Blake’s 7, Red Dwarf and Torchwood: Gendered Heroic Quests 11 One: The Phenomenological Meanings of BBC Cult SF Headquarters and Objects 21 Two: The Rise, Fall and Nostalgic Embers of 1980s Doctor Who 42 Three: The CNC Implications of Blake’s 7’s Stylized Retro- Future 79 Four: What a Smegging Quest! The Journey of Red Dwarf and Its Fandom 108 Five: Everything’s Constantly Changing: Sex and Death on Torchwood 147 Six: NüWho’s Quest to Stay Relevant with Its Fans 186 Conclusion: Encoders and Decoders Shaping the Destinies of Four Cult SF TV Sagas 221 Appendix: Televised Works 233 Chapter Notes 245 Works Cited 259 Index 265 ix This page intentionally left blank Foreword: The Challenges of Regeneration by Matt Hills In one sense, this book reverses the (theoretical) polarity of Henry Jenkins’s seminal study of cult/telefantasy TV and its fans, Textual Poach- ers. Where Jenkins largely dispensed with Stuart Hall’s influential encod- ing/decoding model—to focus instead on Michel de Certeau’s model of “poaching”—Tom Powers intriguingly inverts that decision. In the pages that follow, then, we get a return to Hall’s approach, albeit one that is revised in order to better capture the temporality of long- running media franchises—or, at least, of TV shows that their fans refuse to let fade away via “post-object fandom” (Williams, Post-Object). As Powers thoughtfully muses in his conclusion: “One constant has been present [across these case studies]—time… . Time is … ever present in an always- evolving decoding sense as the four fan cultures … continue to build upon their DIY cultural productions that celebrate, criticize and recreate their televised objects of affection.” Putting media fans’ and brands’ temporalities back into the encoding/ decoding model in this way means admitting that a synchronic, singular focus on moments of determinate decoding is far too limited a way of thinking.